You know them as people who will play anything just to see their Xbox Gamerscore or more recently their PlayStation Trophy level rise. These are people who will play through King Kong just so they can say that their score is bigger than yours.

In Achievement Unlocked, you play as a blue elephant, and there isn’t much to do except run around a room with spikes, trying to get achievements. There are 99 of them and they range anywhere from the inane Menu Explorer to Half-Century, which means your elephant has died 50 times.

The achievements are arbitrary and come spilling out in the begining, but over time, you’ll want to kill yourself or explore this tiny box a little more to get 100 percent of the achievements. In the process, you’ll also kill an unnecessary amount of time, but that’s why you’re reading this right? Now get to playing.
Play time: More than five minutes or until you get bored trying to get all the achievement.

Disney Interactive kind of frustrates me a bit. They don’t do anything bad. It’s just that they have some great ideas, but unfortunately, they’re focused to the kids’ game audience. I thought Hannah Montana: Music Jam had tons of potential if it played more than three tween pop songs. It could even be the DS’ version of Rock Band.

Now, they have this thing called DGamer, which is smart, amazing and the type of technology that makes sense for Nintendo’s hand-held. This is a system that’s specific to Disney games and acts as a social networking site on the DS. It works via WiFi and automatically logs on when connected. All you need is a Disney-centric account and most folks have one if they’ve been to one of the company’s sites (this includes ESPN).

Here’s the cool part. DGamer gives you an avatar that you can customize with shirts, pants and other types of gear. There are even some items that are unlocked by beating Disney games. So big deal, another avatar, you say. Well, there’s also chats via the Internet. Yep, you can use the Nintendo DS as an IM machine while sitting on the couch. You can talk with other Nintendo DS players and PC users connected to the DGamer Web site.

Because it’s cross-platform and your avatar is stored online, you can customize and change them through the Web site or DS, so you don’t have to be on your hand-held if it isn’t available.

As for the achievement part, they’ll be called Honors, and again, it’s specific to Disney-only games. If you beat certain games such as Prince Caspian, DGamer will record your deeds and upload them to the site. Other players can check out what achiiev– er Honors you have. As you know, they’ll be used for bragging rights. Players with more Honors get to say neener, neener, neener to their friends.

It’s an amazing service, but good God, I wish that Nintendo would adopt this thing systemwide. it would make owning a DS more worthwhile. You can almost hear the big N print the money now.

Armor Games is one of my favorite Web game developers, and This is the Only Level proves why. The designer, jmtbo2, creates some compelling content using rather simple concepts. I Love Traffic was an interesting project where players had to control traffic lights. Achievement Unlocked is a game that plays off the need to earn every single achievement/trophy.

Along the same lines, Armor Games’ This is the Only Level tries to see how many ways you can complete one level. The goal is pretty simple: Get the blue elephant from one orange pipe to another. The only problem is that the rules for each level is tweaked each time. Sometimes, you have to move the elephant with arrow keys; other times, you’ll have to move him with the mouse. Sometimes, you’ll have to press the red button on the center platform; other times, you’ll have to fight a pretty stiff wind.

The title for each stage gives a clue about how to solve a level. The amount of variations are amazing, and Armor Games run the gamut. In a way, the game is almost artsy. It reminds me of an Andy Warhol piece if Andy Warhol were alive and making video games.

Play Time: Each level is fairly short, but you have to complete a lot of them. Even if you try to speed run through this, it will take you more than five minutes to go through 30 levels. But trying to solve each variation is amazing.

If there’s one thing that multiplayer shooters need to do it’s evolve. Get complacent and the world passes you by. Now that the leveling system popularized in Modern Warfare has become the norm, other games are searching for the next big gameplay twist.

It could come from Kaos Studios’ Homefront, which has a compelling battlepoints system that could move the genre forward. On the opposite end, Brink could be the new mold for online shooters with its focus on teamwork over personal glory.

I had a chance to spend time with Splash Damage’s upcoming project recently. The Brink developers introduced me to life on the ark, a floating city that was built after the seas rose and civilization collapsed. It’s a place that’s been evenly split between security forces who want to preserve the ark, saving everyone onboard, and the rebels who want to leave the ark and search for any survivors of the climate disaster.

Despite the looks of the characters, there’s no real good side or bad side. Brink simply involves two factions that have different opinions on how to put world back together after it’s fallen apart. But before going into that drama, players have an opportunity to create their own character. They can change anything from skin tone to accents. (You can go Jamaican, British, American, etc.) They can dress them up with the option of adding unlocked clothing and gear, and best of all, players don’t have to create separate loadouts for each faction. The traits players choose transfer seemlessly from rebel force to security and vice versa.

I just got back to the press room after the Microsoft keynote across the street at Moscone North. I’ll do more detailed writeups later on, let me know what you want more specifics on, but for now just the big stuff:

Xbox Live Arcade is going to be open to indie developers. Seven games are up right now. All an aspiring game designer has to do is make a game, submit it for peer review and bam, it’s available to 10,000,000 or so people.

Not only will these games be on Live Arcade, they’ll also be available for the Zune. If you own a Zune you no longer have to hide your shame.

A new Unreal Engine is coming out. Basically, from a gamer’s perspective, it looks better.

Grand Theft Auto IV will be available for the Xbox 360 from day 1 with exclusive downloadable content.

Ninja Gaiden 2 will ship June 3 in the US.

Peter Molyneux announced that the casino games in Fable 2 will be available on Live Arcade a few weeks in advance, and that the money from the Live Arcade version and the in-game Fable 2 version will be the same, meaning you can get rich before even owning the game.

He also announced that Fable 2 will have dynamic co-op, where you can bring your character into someone else’s game, and all money and experience you earn will stick with the character.

Gears of War 2 will ship in early November of this year.

Is that not enough? Want to know every little thing discussed? Well then read on past the jump for the full, extensive, point-by-point report of what was said that I couldn’t bear to subject the rest of you to.Continue Reading →

John Schappert is kicking off the “real GDC” with a keynote speech. He is the corporate vice president at Microsoft and former Electronic Arts studio guru. He heads the software and services teams, managing Microsoft’s gaming platforms including Xbox Live and Games for Windows.

His first real job in gaming was creating Desert Strike for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. He founded Tiburon in Florida and made the Madden games for Electronic Arts. EA bought his studio in 1998. He went on to lead EA’s Vancouver studios and ultimately became chief operating officer of EA’s worldwide game studios. Continue Reading →